自然的几何化:切萨尔皮诺的植物分类思想

The Geometrization of Nature:The Plant Classification Ideas of Andrea Cesalpino

意大利植物学家切萨尔皮诺通常被认为是近现代植物分类学的奠基者,是植物分类学史上“第一个真正的体系构建者”。他在构建体系时将亚里士多德先验原则与他观察、解剖植物的实际经验相结合,采用逻辑划分法,以结实部分的形态为主要分类依据。由于采用了划分法,其体系常被后来学者诟病“不自然”,但事实上切萨尔皮诺也清楚这一点,只是当时所知植物数量有限,他没有太多选择。切萨尔皮诺对植物分类学更重要的贡献在于将分类依据限于植物的几何形态方面,排除了颜色、生境、用途等属性,这点与当时学者对“形式”概念的发展密切相关。依据形态分类并用数学语言来描述形态,这意味着欧洲16—17世纪对生物体的研究同样受到了数学化、几何化潮流的影响。

The Italian botanist Andrea Cesalpino is generally regarded as the founder of modern plant taxonomy and the"first true systematist"in the history of plant taxonomy.In constructing his system,he combined Aristotelian'a priori'principles with his practical experience in observing and dissecting plants,adopted the logical division method and took the morphology of the fruiting parts as the main basis for classification.Because of the division method,his system was often criticized by later scholars as"unnatural".Although in fact Cesalpino was aware of this,the limited number of plants known at the time left him with few options.His more important contribution to plant taxonomy was that he limited the classification criteria to geometric forms,excluding other attributes such as color,habitat,and use,which was closely related to the development of the concept of"form"by scholars at the time.Basing classification on form and describing form in mathematical language implied that the study of living organisms in Europe in the 16th and 17th centuries was also under the influence of the trend of mathematization and geometrization of nature.